Open Access is often a topic that raises vociferous discussion on NN. After arriving back from a relaxing tour of the Roman remains around the Lazio region of Italy, having drunk my fill of Barolo, I was pleased to finally get round to checking out some of the TOCs festering away in my Inbox this morning.
PLoS Biology have an interesting article that doesn’t seem to have been picked up on NN yet, so I thought I’d point it out to interested readers.
Stuart Shieber has published an article which highlights an inequity between subscription and Open Access journal models.
He did a good job of grabbing my attention with the following controversial statement:
the subscription-fee business model has manifested systemic dysfunctionalities in practice.
Ooooh – mystery, intrigue and a delightful dollop of dysfunctionality. What could the scandal be? I’ll return to that later.
As we get into the article, Shieber outlines his basic problem with how authors face up to the decision of submitting their article to traditional (subscription based) versus processing-fee (Open Access, where the author pays a fee to cover publication costs if the article is accepted) journal models.
The problem is, of course, that the [e.g.] US$1,500 article revenue to the journal that is provided by the processing fee under the processing-fee model is hidden in subscription charges in the subscription-fee model, and these are typically paid not by the authors, even in their role as readers of the journals, but on their behalf by subscribing research institutions, typically university research libraries. The authors don’t see these charges; hence, they don’t enter their economic calculus. Yet authors are now expected to pay these charges under the open-access processing-fee model. It is no wonder they might be expected to submit preferentially to closed-access journals. Indeed, it is a wonder that authors, even now, are willing to submit to processing-fee-charging open-access journals.
Shieber goes on to outline a proposal that would encourage Universities and Funding Agencies to set aside non-fungible (i.e., non-interchangable) sources of cash to pay for both traditional subscriptions and processing-fees. He highlights that the Wellcome Trust is already running such a scheme, and other universities in Europe and North America have established funds to assist with processing-fees. Good on them!
Shieber adds some caveats and issues surrounding implementation of such schemes, with another potential controversy arising from his statement that funding bodies and/or researchers have an
underlying goal of providing a sustainable mechanism for supporting open-access journals.
The controversy?
- Why should we financially support open-access journals?
Well, the obvious retort that springs to my mind is “Why should we publicly support privately owned subscription based journals?”. I guess the underlying insinuation is that we should support Open Access, as it has the potential to disseminate our publicly funded research further.
Shieber then gets into the juicy stuff, which unfortunately isn’t quite so juicy. A brief discussion of how hybrid systems (e.g., Springer’s Open Choice) that are currently in place could lead to a “tragedy of the commons”, as the impact of authors paying to publish is diluted across all subscription payers, leading to incredibly minor reductions in subscription fees across all Universities. This is overcome by excluding such hybrid journals from the OA pot.
One problem I have with this otherwise interesting article and concept is the discussion of “caps” by funders and universities, based on a “typical” author publication rate, with authors then trading off between submitting to OA with author fee and subscription with libraries covering the cost.
I believe Universities are institutions that should help and encourage the most academically gifted individuals, rather than reduce standards to a lower common denominator. I think some of Shieber’s arguments start to unravel a bit here. By basing his trade-off scheme on a “cap” calculated as a percentage of the grant acquired by a researcher, he seemingly overlooks the fact that different research fields typically require and gain different amounts of funding.
I’m cheap baby – as a theoretician and modeller, my main research costs are my drinking salary. Even my shiny new computer was a snip, costing easily less than a month’s salary. I don’t do any lab work, so no expensive machines or reagents to include in my grant applications. I don’t do field work, so no equipment to buy for that either. Although rubber boots are often cheaper than a computer.
A handy mobile phone holder
So, under Shieber’s proposal, I would be more limited in my choice of where to submit articles than someone who has more expensive research costs. There’s likely to be huge variation within and between fields, which will impact upon who gets to submit where, which can then feedback to who is successful in future grant applications. This is a tricky point to overcome.
I enjoyed this article. It was Open Access, and agreed with many of my opinions about publication models, so not much surprise that I like it. By specifically shifting some public money specifically towards OA (processing-fee) journals, Shieber argues, we actually make the publishing system fairer and more competitive. This should eventually curb the hyperinflation of subscription fees that is currently reducing access to all journal articles, and could present a “cost neutral” solution to switching form one dominant publication model to a more balanced situation.
But, by supporting OA in this way, is there a danger of unfairly squeezing some journals out of the market? I’m not convinced of this – we’ve been supporting for profit publishing houses with public money for some time now. If they can’t face up to balanced competition, they shouldn’t be there. If there’s a niche in the market for a certain type of journal, the most appropriate model should be able to occupy it.
It doesn’t make all that much sense to continue with a certain approach just because it’s the status quo. But, I like it, I like it, I la-la-la-like it it’ll be interesting to see if Shieber’s arguments start to affect policy soon.
